Sergio Siciliano

Sergio Siciliano
Siciliano in 2022
Member of the Buenos Aires City Legislature
Incumbent
Assumed office 10 December 2023
Constituency	City of Buenos Aires
Member of the Buenos Aires Province Chamber of Deputies
In office 10 December 2019 – 10 December 2023
Constituency	Fifth Electoral Section
Undersecretary of Education of Buenos Aires Province
In office 10 December 2015 – 10 December 2019
Governor	María Eugenia Vidal
Organising rector of the University of the City of Buenos Aires
In office 19 September 2023 – December 2024
Personal details
Born	Sergio Hernán Siciliano (1984-08-27) August 27, 1984 Buenos Aires, Argentina
Nationality	Argentine
Political party	Republican Proposal (PRO)
Other political affiliations	Cambiemos (2015–2019); Juntos por el Cambio (2019–2023); Vamos por más (legislative bloc, 2023–)
Alma mater	Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina (Licentiate in Educational Sciences)
Occupation	Educator, politician

Sergio Hernán Siciliano (born 27 August 1984) is an Argentine educator, academic and politician who has served as a member of the Buenos Aires City Legislature since December 2023, sitting in the bloc Vamos por más. In March 2024 he was elected chair of the legislature’s Committee on Education, Science and Technology.

At provincial level, Siciliano was undersecretary of education of Buenos Aires Province from 2015 to 2019 in the administration of Governor María Eugenia Vidal, and was elected to the Buenos Aires Province Chamber of Deputies for the Fifth Electoral Section, serving from 2019 to 2023.

In higher education he was appointed organising rector of the University of the City of Buenos Aires (also known as UniCABA) in 2023 and held the post until the appointment of a new organising rector in December 2024. His tenure as a provincial official has been the subject of public debate, particularly over the reorganisation of rural and island schools and the response to the 2018 gas explosion at a school in Moreno, and as a legislator he has been an outspoken critic of what he describes as political indoctrination in public education.

Early life and education

Siciliano was born in Buenos Aires on 27 August 1984. He studied educational sciences at the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina (UCA), where he obtained a licentiate degree in educational sciences.

Official institutional biographies describe him as having subsequently completed postgraduate specialisations in educational planning, education policy and administration, and business administration.

Career

City of Buenos Aires

Siciliano has held various posts in the education administration of the City of Buenos Aires. He worked in the city’s Ministry of Education in the early 2010s and was Director-General of the Teaching Career (Dirección General de Carrera Docente) before being appointed Executive Director of the Evaluation Unit for Education Quality and Equity (Unidad de Evaluación Integral de la Calidad y Equidad Educativa, UEICEE), a decentralised body created by Law 5049 to evaluate the city’s education system.

Decree 95/2015, published in the Official Gazette of the city, accepted his resignation as Director-General of the Teaching Career effective 1 March 2015 and appointed him Executive Director of UEICEE for a fixed term. A later decree thanked him for his services and recorded the end of his mandate as Executive Director of UEICEE in December 2015.

Province of Buenos Aires

Siciliano joined the government of Buenos Aires Province following the 2015 provincial elections. He was appointed Undersecretary of Education (subsecretario de Educación) in the provincial Ministry of Education under Governor María Eugenia Vidal and Director-General of Culture and Education Gabriel Sánchez Zinny, serving from 10 December 2015 to 10 December 2019.

As undersecretary he participated in the design and implementation of education policies, including a process of revision of curricular designs across different levels of the provincial education system, which was highlighted in contemporary press profiles of the Vidal administration’s education team.

In the 2019 provincial elections he stood as a candidate for the Buenos Aires Province Chamber of Deputies in the Fifth Electoral Section on a Juntos por el Cambio list and was elected to a four-year term. He served as a provincial deputy from 10 December 2019 to 10 December 2023 and sat in the Juntos and Juntos por el Cambio blocs, participating in various committees, including education and budget oversight.

Buenos Aires City Legislature

In the 2023 Buenos Aires City elections Siciliano ran for a seat in the Buenos Aires City Legislature for Republican Proposal (PRO) as part of the Juntos por el Cambio alliance. He took office as a city deputy on 10 December 2023, representing the Vamos por más bloc.

On 8 March 2024 the legislature constituted several standing committees and elected Siciliano as chair of the Committee on Education, Science and Technology. As a city legislator he has presented initiatives linked to education policy and recognition of educational organisations, including bills on educational innovation, school evaluations and declarations of legislative interest for education-related activities.

Academic and professional roles

Alongside his political career, Siciliano has held teaching and academic management positions at various universities and higher education institutions. He has been associated with programmes in educational management, education policy and organisational sociology.

He has taught administration and sociology of organisations and other subjects in the degree in educational management at ESEADE, and has been involved in postgraduate teaching and thesis supervision in the field of education governance and management at the Universidad de Ciencias Empresariales y Sociales (UCES), where he directed a master’s programme in government and management of education.

In 2020s sources he is also mentioned as professor at the National University of the Northwest of the Province of Buenos Aires (UNOBA), the National University of San Antonio de Areco (UNSADA), and the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina, as well as member of academic committees for master’s programmes in government and management of education at other institutions.

University of the City of Buenos Aires

On 19 September 2023, by Decree 252/2023 of the Buenos Aires City Government, Siciliano was appointed organising rector (rector organizador) of the University of the City of Buenos Aires (also known as UniCABA or Universidad de la Ciudad). According to the university, the position involved organising the academic and institutional development of the new public university created by Law 6.002 of the Buenos Aires City Legislature.

As organising rector he signed cooperation agreements with provincial and national institutions, including a framework agreement with the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) to strengthen joint research and training programmes, and addressed the university community in messages in which he outlined priorities for the institution’s initial stages.

In December 2024 the University of the City announced the appointment of María Florencia Ripani as new organising rector, succeeding Siciliano in the leadership of the institution. The change in university authorities took place in a context of debate over the internal statute of the university and the mechanisms for appointing its leadership, which were publicly discussed by political figures including former Buenos Aires City education minister Soledad Acuña.

Educational policy positions

Siciliano’s public interventions as an official and legislator have focused on issues such as school organisation, curriculum, evaluation and academic promotion.

In interviews and opinion pieces he has argued for a review of grade repetition practices in Argentina’s education system, highlighting research evidence and standardised test results that, in his view, show limited benefits of repetition and high dropout risks. In a 2022 radio interview cited by Infocielo he supported a proposal by provincial education minister Alberto Sileoni to reconsider how repetition operates, stating that in the existing system repeating a year often leads to disengagement rather than improved learning and advocating for more continuous assessment and “cycled” progression models.

He has also supported policies aimed at incorporating digital technologies and robotics in schools and has defended the decision of the Vidal administration to modify the model of one-to-one computer provision inherited from the national Conectar Igualdad programme, arguing that the provincial policy sought to prioritise connectivity and shared equipment in schools over individual devices.

Public debates and controversies

Rural and island schools reorganisation

In early 2018 the government of Buenos Aires Province announced a plan to reorganise a number of rural schools and schools in the islands of the Delta of San Fernando, which included the closure of 39 rural school sites and eight island schools with very low enrolment and the transfer of their students to other establishments.

As undersecretary of education, Siciliano was one of the officials who publicly defended the measure. In interviews he stated that the policy did not entail “school closures” in terms of loss of educational provision but rather the re-grouping of students from sites with very few or no pupils, and emphasised that no child would be left without schooling and that transport would be provided, with distances limited to a few kilometres. He also argued that enrolment fluctuations in rural areas made it necessary to adjust the locations of schools over time.

Teachers’ unions, local communities and opposition legislators criticised the policy, describing it as a closure of schools that would weaken public education in sparsely populated areas and affect the cultural and community role of rural and island schools. Some provincial legislators requested the interpellation of the education minister and questioned the impact of the reorganisation on school infrastructure and employment of teachers in rural areas.

In the face of protests and legal actions, provincial authorities agreed with unions to review the situation of each case jointly and to reassess some of the planned re-groupings. Later, Peronist provincial deputy Débora Indarte and other critics associated the rural and island schools episode with broader criticisms of the Vidal administration’s education policy, accusing Siciliano and other officials of under-funding infrastructure and closing institutions, a characterisation he has rejected in subsequent interviews.

School infrastructure and the 2018 Moreno explosion

On 2 August 2018 a gas explosion at Primary School No. 49 in the district of Moreno, Buenos Aires Province, killed the deputy headteacher and a school assistant and led to a new round of strikes and protests by teachers’ unions over school infrastructure conditions.

As undersecretary of education, Siciliano gave several interviews in which he described the event as a tragedy linked to irregularities in gas works that had not been detected by the provincial authorities. In an interview with Infobae he stated that “there were a series of irregularities that we did not detect” and indicated that any official with responsibility for the situation should be held accountable. He also announced that the provincial government would open an administrative investigation into possible previous complaints about gas leaks and undertake a broader review of infrastructure conditions in public schools.

Teachers’ unions and some social organisations criticised the provincial government’s handling of school infrastructure and argued that the explosion was the result of accumulated neglect. Union leaders such as Mirta Petrocini of the Federación de Educadores Bonaerenses (FEB) and Roberto Baradel of SUTEBA called strikes and stated that the state bore responsibility for ensuring safe conditions in schools. Reports from left-wing media and some activists directly accused provincial education officials, including Siciliano, of political and administrative responsibility, while official statements emphasised the role of contracted maintenance providers and local school councils and pointed to the subsequent review of safety procedures.

Debate over “indoctrination” and democracy teaching materials

In February 2023, as a provincial deputy, Siciliano was among the Juntos por el Cambio politicians who publicly questioned teaching materials prepared by the Directorate-General of Culture and Education of Buenos Aires Province for activities marking the fortieth anniversary of the return to democracy in Argentina. He criticised a suggested work plan for secondary schools that proposed a chronological review of political developments from 1983 onwards and devoted several sessions to the governments of Néstor and Cristina Kirchner, arguing that the sequence presented a partisan perspective and “prioritised ideology over knowledge”.

National deputy Cristian Ritondo, PRO president Patricia Bullrich and other figures amplified the criticism, describing the materials as “indoctrination”. The provincial education authorities rejected these accusations and maintained that the materials were aligned with official curriculum guidelines and aimed at encouraging reflection on democratic processes.

In later interviews Siciliano continued to use the concept of “state planning of indoctrination” to characterise what he saw as politically biased content in some public-school materials, sparking further debate in media and education circles over the boundaries between civic education and partisan messaging.

Publications

• Los cambios que cambian. El diseño curricular en la voz del aula (Buenos Aires: Paidós, 2021), ISBN 978-950-12-0336-3.

Political affiliation

Siciliano is a member of Republican Proposal (PRO). At provincial level he formed part of the Cambiemos and Juntos por el Cambio coalitions, and in the Buenos Aires City Legislature he sits in the Vamos por más bloc.

See also

• Buenos Aires City Legislature
• Buenos Aires Province Chamber of Deputies
• University of the City of Buenos Aires

External links

• Official website – profile at the Buenos Aires City Legislature

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